WORCESTER -- Jurors began deliberations in the trial of a Fitchburg man accused of murdering his wife nearly four years ago and disposing of her body in a suitcase, but they did not reach a verdict Tuesday.

Jurors were handed the case shortly after 11 a.m., and they were brought back into the courtroom just before 4 p.m., to announce their decision to suspend deliberations until today at 9 a.m.

Asim Amran, 34, formerly of 355 Summer St., Fitchburg, is accused of poisoning his wife, Faiza Malik, 27, with morphine and disposing of her body in a suitcase in a wooded area adjacent to the Exit 5 onramp to Interstate 395 in Oxford on or around Dec. 31, 2008.

During closing arguments earlier Tuesday, attorney Kevin Reddington, representing Amran, implored jurors to consider that Amran may have been a lousy husband, but he did not kill Malik.

Reddington said state police failed to investigate Malik's mental condition around the time of her disappearance, and that if they had, they would have determined that she was depressed and committed suicide.

Reddington and Amran have explained Amran's disposing of Malik's body as a panicked reaction of a man who believed he would have been blamed for her death because he was a cheating husband and, as a nurse, he had access to numerous controlled substances, including morphine he later admitted to stealing from two nursing homes where he worked.

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Reddington also attempted once again to discredit the testimony of Rukhsara Saffa, an ex-stripper and former fiancée of Amran, who alerted state police to the location of Malik's remains in August 2009, leading to Amran's arrest.

The attorney said Saffa knew about the disposal from the start and even offered her vehicle for it, despite Saffa's testimony last week that she learned of the murder only a short time before turning Amran in to the authorities. He said Saffa caved under police pressure and threats that she may be charged as an accessory to murder, which would have led to jail time and deportation, since she was not a U.S. citizen at the time.

Reddington said Saffa "lies faster than a horse could trot," referring to her differing testimonies in front of the grand jury and in the courtroom, and accused her of using her status as a cooperating witness to help her and her family gain both citizenship and subsidized housing.

Senior First Assistant District Attorney Daniel Bennett, representing the commonwealth, said there is plenty of evidence to convict Amran without Saffa's testimony, despite Reddington's claim that it all hinged on her.

Bennett said the letter Amran wrote, which Amran planned to have Saffa copy over and take the blame for Malik's murder, referenced the substances later found in Malik's system and was written at least a month before toxicology results were released.

Amran testified Monday that the entirety of the letter was a lie, and admitted to lying to state police about Malik's whereabouts.

Amran also lied to his own family, Bennett said, telling one brother that Malik went to Florida and another that he didn't know where she was. Amran then lied to a co-worker, Bennett said, telling her Malik had gone back to Pakistan, and told a Department of Children and Families investigator she was living elsewhere in the U.S.

"He is going to make up whatever lie is going to get him out of this," Bennett said.

Bennett added that there was no triggering moment that could have led to Malik taking her own life because she planned to escape her failing marriage by staying in Pakistan after a family trip there for her brother's wedding, scheduled for February 2009.

He said Amran made their son's passport disappear because he did not want him to stay in Pakistan with Malik, who would have never left her son behind with "a father who thinks going to Chuck E. Cheese is the answer to being a good parent."

Bennett said Amran views his son and other people as possessions, and that he saw no harm in ripping a child from his mother's arms and giving Saffa that duty because he believes "one woman is the same as the next."

Jurors have been given three options in the case: find Amran not guilty, find him guilty of murder in the first degree, or find him guilty of murder in the second degree.

With a charge of first-degree murder, jurors must determine that Amran committed an unlawful killing, and acted with malice and with deliberate premeditation. For second-degree murder, jurors must find the same but without deliberate premeditation.

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